#I'm trying to find a line between making funny comments and not being unfairly mean

[theriu]

River Reads Midnight Sun

Well met, traveler! This is the starting post for my experiment, wherein I, who have never read the Twilight books or seen the movies, read Midnight Sun (basically Twilight from Edward's perspective) and commentate for (hopefully) your entertainment! I decided it would be easiest to do this a chapter at a time, and my commentary will essentially be a summary of each chapter so people equally unfamiliar with the story can follow along. You can follow or block this experiment with the tag #river reads midnight sun.

I think that should do it! Let's get started with:

Chapter 1: First Sight

In which Edward finds high schoolers very Boring and Inane, and also nearly goes bonkers over a potential snack.

First things first: Can we talk about how gross pomegranates look? Is the cover art SUPPOSED to resemble an optical illusion between a halved pomegranate and a bleeding heart? Either way, EW.

Right, on to business!

Edward is bored, you guys. He is SO BORED. High school is so boring. Purgatory is mentioned, as well as “tedium” and “monotonous.” He really wants us to know how bored he is, even though the word “boredom” is not used until the sixth paragraph. But trust me, he’s very bored. One begins to wonder why the immortal 100+-year-old vampire is choosing to hang out daily in such a boring place, but I’m sure it will be explained.

Now we learn about his mindreading powers! This is also very boring because most of the minds he has to read are petty high school minds. By the way, the inane sheeple chatter in the school mindscape today is all about the new girl! I wonder who she could be! Ed sure doesn’t care! He can see every angle of her face via peoples’ thoughts, and he is NOT impressed. Half the “sheep-like males” are crushing on her. Edward’s disdain for them is palpable, almost as if it's not totally normal and fine for human teenagers to find new things like a new student exciting. We may be witnessing a smidge of superiority complex, which is shocking, no doubt.

Mind-reading as a way to introduce other relevant characters is handy, I will grant the author that! Of course, Ed tries not to mindread his fellow vampires out of courtesy, but he KNOWS what they are probably thinking, and boy is he ready to tell us!

Rosalie: Is either actually super hot or super thinks she is, and apparently this debate encompasses her every waking moment. She only compares herself to VAMPIRES, of course, because humans could never be comparably hot. Related to a stagnant pool. Wow, Ed.

Emmett: Hyper competitive guy who has no new thoughts because he says EVERYTHING he thinks. Compared to a glass-clear lake. I suppose that means Ed maybe thinks he has depth? Maybe? We'll err on the side of optimism.

Jasper: Suffering. That’s literally the entire description.

Alice (who can see the future) introduces herself by beaming thoughts at Ed asking how Jasper is doing. Jasper is not doing well. Apparently he is so ready to eat people that he has forgotten how to Human and is sitting in a corpse-like rigor, because it seems when you become a vampire you lose quirks like restless leg syndrome and blinking? This feels full of potential hilarity to me, but I fear such hilarity will not be realized in this Very Serious Book.

Anyway, back to Jasper, who is SUFFERING. Alice asks if there is any danger. Edward signals no. Half a page later, his exposition about Jasper's problem adds, “Jasper was very dangerous right now." Okay, so which is it?! PICK A LANE, ED

(On a genuine note, I already like Alice; she counters Jasper’s fantasies about eating a girl by telling him her name and a few personal facts in a way that shows Alice makes an effort to know her classmates as more than just The Humans. Yay empathy!)

Btw, Ed’s internal monologue indicates they’re hanging out at this school to build their strength and endurance by being around humans and not eating them, and to that I say REALLY??? You chose high school for that?! The one where you’re SUPER BORED?? GO HANG OUT AT A COFFEE SHOP OR SOMETHING

Ope, plot progression! Bella has entered the chat lunchroom. Literally everyone is thinking about Bella, including Jessica, no doubt the requisite catty high school rival who crushed on Edward previously. She has many disgruntled thoughts about Bella, Bella noticing the Cullens, everyone noticing Bella, etc. Ed, who has been doing a great job keeping us up to date on the general thought processes of the student body, takes this moment to assure us once again how much he finds all of this chatter inane AND petty AND trivial, and he’s definitely going to try harder to block them out (again).

Wait, oh my word, was that a line of HUMOROUS BANTER between the Cullens just now?! I have renewed hope for this Very Serious Book!

So Edward is the vampires' mental scout who checks for people suspecting he and his family are inhumanly weird (as opposed to acceptably weird), and naturally he does a brain scan on Bella. Oooo but he’s not hearing anything! And now they have locked eyes! Her eyes are very odd, because of the DEPTH of them! Already, Bella is very Frail and immune to mindreading and somehow has “deeper” eyes than I guess any other human Edward has met in his 100+ years? Ed, I think you need to make eye contact more.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled torrent of inane high schooler thoughts! Amazingly, they are all still focused on Bella and being attracted to or jealous of her, because of course real high schoolers are all Inane and Tedious. (The one exception is Angela, who is busy thinking about homework. I like her, she seems normal.) Jessica is being catty again, and what’s this?! Ed suddenly has this STRANGE URGE to SHIELD Bella from this nasty girl! How very odd and unusual! Especially from a guy who very clearly finds all human teenagers Inane/Petty/Trivial! Bella must be special, except she is also “very unexceptional." Also, Ed is highly frustrated that he can’t read this girl’s mind, despite him constantly reading her like a book and her having “deceptively communicative” eyes.

Rosalie breaks Ed out of his frustration-driven contradictory spiral, and they all go to class, Ed casually mentioning his two medical degrees in an internal dig at his biology teacher (again, why are you hanging out at high school???) Naturally, Bella shows up and the only seat available is the one next to Edward, because Plot everyone is subliminally terrified of him. Ed has a moment of panic wondering if not hearing one girl’s thoughts means he has a vampire disease and is gonna lose all his mindreading, and then he has another moment of empathy for Bella having to sit next to the Scary Vampire.

Then she walks in front of an air duct, and Edward is suddenly overcome with INTENSE BLOODLUST THE LIKES OF WHICH HE HAS NEVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE!!! He wants to eat her SO BAD, you guys! He spends roughly EIGHT PAGES brooding on how badly he wants to eat her, noticing how delicious she smells, crushing the underside of a desk with his intense self-control grip (but having the presence of mind to “destroy the evidence” by rounding out the finger-shaped hole he just made), analyzing the logistics of eliminating a roomful of witnesses and whether to do so before or after eating her, seeing his monstrous reflection in her eyeballs, angsting over how bad he will feel when he murders a bunch of people, plotting ways of murdering her that WON’T result in collateral damage, questioning Bella’s sanity for daring to SHAKE HER HAIR IN HIS VICINITY, angsting about how disappointed his wonderful adoptive dad Carlisle will be (aww, that’s actually sweet), stubbornly deciding “she can’t make me,” hating Bella with the fury of a thousand suns for daring to smell so delicious, and shutting off his breathing so he has at least some self-control, which does sound uncomfortable but I applaud the effort.

Then class finally ends (for him and for us), and he goes and hides in his car. Which, honestly, relatable.

The car timeout helps restore his sanity, and he determines he does in fact not need to kill her and that hating her guts for smelling like an eight-course dinner probably isn’t fair! He just needs to avoid her as much as possible. Bless your heart for your optimism, Male Lead of a Paranormal Romance Novel.

The solution he comes up with is to charm the poor secretary (who keeps having to remind herself mentally that he’s too young for her, which, augh) into switching him to a different sixth-period course. Bella chooses this opportune moment to walk in, which he doesn’t notice until her DELICIOUS SMELL is blown over him (I question why someone with such advanced senses can only notice powerful smells when he is downwind of them). Edward’s Amazing Vampire Vision kicks in, allowing him to once again see his Monstrous Face in the reflection of her eyes, despite her being over against the wall. He briefly contemplates double homicide, then . . . uh . . . gives up on changing classes so he can walk away. This doesn’t feel like a long-term solution, Ed, but Kudos for the self-control.

The chapter wraps up with him jumping into his car (it’s the end of the day, so the others are waiting for him) and breaking the speed limit out of the parking lot. Alice uses Future Sight (it’s super effective!) to see that Ed is either going to book it out of Forks (the town) or go and murder Bella in her house. I once again have reason to like Alice, who orders him not to do it, adding that it would metaphorically kill Bella’s dad. He drops them off and races away again, not yet sure if he’s going to tell Dad Carlisle that he’s leaving or going to go eat the delicious new girl. And Scene!

Well, that wasn’t as painful as I feared, so huzzah! I kind of appreciate the internal look at his thoughts and how his mindreading lets us see other characters even when they can’t talk. Got a bit long at times, especially with how Inane and Petty and Trivial high schoolers are to Edward! LOTS OF DETAIL about how badly he wanted to eat Bella and possibly murder all bystanders, which I guess does go to show how bad the bloodlust is, because dang! (But why do none of the others have this reaction to her yet? Maybe they just don’t have classes with her. You must be this close to the Bella to ride the maniac vampire train!)

And with that, I have earned a much-deserved break before delving into CHAPTER TWO: OPEN BOOK! I’m sure Edward will totally succeed in his plan to skedaddle out of Forks and never see Bella again! Stay positive, Ed! =Dd

Chapter 2->

#river rambles #river reads midnight sun #twilight #edward cullen #bella swan #alice cullen #vampires #commentary #summary #satire I guess? #Idk #I'm trying to find a line between making funny comments and not being unfairly mean #I don't want to actually be a JERK here #but I'm still going to do a LITTLE mocking #anyhoo please let me know what ya'll think and if this is worth continuing! #and thanks for reading!

[communistvashoth]

Look, i'm not saying i dont see the parallells between illuminati/reptilian conspiracies and historical antisemitism. But the idea of a shadowy, corrupt group controlling the government is a common thread in a lot of fringe theories, and calling it a reference to Jews throws me so far under the bus you wouldn't fucking believe it

I’ve decided to write a pretty long response to this, and i hope you’ll read the whole thing. I promise, I have no desire to throw you under any buses.

(pertaining to this)

I'm sorry you feel unfairly piled on; I dont know who you are, but I doubt you deserve that, most people don’t. it's sadly common in more progressive communities, and the internet in general, for people to respond to mistakes and miscommunications with rigid condemnation and some sort of "excommunication". if that's what you're going through, that probably is unfair, and you're justified in feeling frustrated. it also, just generally, really sucks to be told that something you did or said may have been insensitive or harmful. most people dont mean to do that sort of thing, and when we're told something we did was racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. it often feels like we are being labeled a racist, a sexist, an anti-semite, a homophobe, etc. that feels really shitty, because those are shitty things to be, so being called that feels like being called a bad person. its vitally important, though, that we remember that those words are primarily adjectives. everybody does things that are racist, sexist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that we are those things. 

we don’t become racists, sexists, anti-semites, homophobes, etc. until we are confronted with harm we caused accidentally and, instead of hearing that, addressing it, changing for the better, and moving on, we become defensive, double-down, and resent the people we’ve harmed for having the audacity to make us feel guilty. 

in this instance, i’m afraid there are more than just parallels, and the anti-semitism is more than historical. many of those fringe conspiracy theories don’t just share the concept of a secret, evil cabal running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever ridiculous thing, they share specifically the idea that there is a secret, evil cabal of jewish people running the world and destroying western culture/white people/free speech/whatever thing. they seem like ridiculous garbage that only nutcases believe in, but when actually investigated and dissected, many of those theories are based in the same bigotries as the blood libels going back as far as the 11th century. the fact of the matter is, most if not all of those such conspiracy theories are not similar to anti-semitism, they are anti-semitism, and they are not historical, they are happening now, and they are motivating anti-semitic violence now. I mean, just look at Qanon and the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. and if you’re not very familiar with those, then you should count yourself very, very lucky that they aren’t things that demand your attention. 

I am sorry for how you are feeling; i know from experience that it feels really shitty to be told you’ve harmed someone when you didnt mean to, and i know what it’s like to be subjected to overreactions about it, and how shitty that is. assuming you are the OP of the post i commented on, i don’t think you meant to harm anyone, you were just making a joke that was, admittedly, funny, and if anyone is saying you’re a raging anti-semite, or evil, or irredeemable, or anything like that, that’s definitely an out-of-proportion response to one post. I hope that you can recognise when people are overreacting or taking out their own unhappiness out on you, and i hope that you can fortify and feel some comfort in the knowledge that they are wrong, and you dont deserve to be treated like that. but i also hope that your feelings of being thrown under the bus don’t harden you to genuine criticism. i don’t doubt it hurts, and you are definitely justified in feeling that a lot of that hurt is unwarranted, but being told you’ve done something harmful will never be painless. counterintuitively, it’s actually a sort of a silver lining to all this; that bad feeling, that unpleasant niggle of guilt, it means that you care when you harm people by accident. but as much as those feelings suck, and as much as it super, super sucks to be dogpiled by internet assholes, we can’t use those bad feelings to insulate ourselves from our mistakes. 

it hurts, but it doesn’t justify ignoring the harm we do to others; being called a racist has never hurt a white person as much as racism harms people of colour. being told we’ve done something anti-semitic is hard, but trying to navigate through increasingly common murky double-speak and covert dog-whistles as a jewish person is harder. they don’t deserve that, but it’s an unavoidable part of their lives. if we care about them, if we want to help them, if we want to help lay the bricks for a new world where they won’t have to suffer that, we have to shoulder that burden with them. sometimes that means examining our language, learning about unpleasant history and its modern forms, and letting a joke go by the wayside when it sounds uncomfortably like a dog-whistle, even if that isn’t how we meant it.

if it helps at all, you’re not alone in this. you’re not alone in your feelings, and you’re not alone in this experience. in fact, if you’re still feeling shitty/frustrated/unheard, i’d be happy to chat with you off anon (altho maybe not immediately, it’s getting late). I’ve also done things that were anti-semitic without meaning to and had to confront that, and i struggle with all sorts of learned prejudices that i want to be better about. If you need to vent about this, if you need someone you can just word-vomit at without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings, i am here, and i am absolutely willing to listen. 

and even if none of this affects you -although i dont believe it to be the case, it’s totally possible you’re coming to this discussion in bad faith; anon means i dont even know for sure who you are, so i can’t exactly check- i hope you will read it, as long as it is. and even if you don’t, or do and dismiss it, maybe it will reach someone else.

i hope you, anon-who-might-be-OP, feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and understanding with this.

i hope any jewish people who were affected by this situation feel better; i hope you feel heard. i hope you find your way to peace and healing with this.

#my posts #my asks #anon #anti semitism #Anon #chatterbox